Blueprint For Online Success – Part 2

In part 1 of a blueprint for online success, I explained that the first step for any new internet marketer is to decide what product to sell. I looked at 4 different types of products.

1. Physical products.
2. Digital/Information products.
3. Other peoples products
4. Professional/Consulting services.

I am assuming that you have now decided on what type of product you are selling. If you haven’t then don’t worry about it, just keep researching until you find one. For Part 2 we are going to look at the most crucial component of any internet marketing business – Developing a web platform to sell your product.

Developing A Web Platform

Once you have your product you are going to need a website in order to sell it or promote it. Luckily for you there are a lot of different ways to build a website. Even if you have absolutely no technical knowledge or ability you will find that building a website is actually quite easy. Let’s have a look at some of the options available to you.

1. Pay Someone To Do It

Depending on your product and how complicated you want the site to be, you can always pay someone to build you a website. It is impossible to say exactly how much a website is going to cost you. For example if you are selling an info product you only need a 2 page site, it would be quite feasible to get someone to build you a site for $50 – $100. As long as you have the copy and the files, someone could put it together relatively quickly for you. You’ll be amazed at how many highly competent people there are who are desperate for your business. Check out

www.rentacoder.com
www.elance.com
www.guru.com

You’ll find many experienced web developers at anyone of those sites who will be willing to put your website together for a very reasonable price. If on the other hand your site is more complex and requires more functionality you could be looking at spending $1000’s if not $10,000’s. There are many web development firms from all over the world who could perform the task. Just make sure that you check out their work history and clients before taking them on.

2. Build It Your Self

If you can’t afford a web developer then you can always build a website yourself. If you know nothing about web development then you’re in for a steep learning curve. However the internet is full of excellent resources and information on web development and if you are really determined there is no reason why you couldn’t do it yourself. If you do decide that you are going to build a website, then here a few things that you should be aware off.

Domain Name – You are going to need to select a domain for your site. Cost you approximately $10.

Hosting – You will need somewhere to host your website on. Plan to budget around $10 per month for this.

HTML – Stand for Hyper Text Markup Language, you don’t need to become an expert in it, but some basic html knowledge would be a big advantage.

FTP – Stands for File Transfer Protocol, this will allow you to transfer files from your computer up to your website.

You can also build you site using one of the blogging platforms such as Wordpress or Typepad. Or you might want to look at Dreamweaver or Xsite Pro.

Building your own website can be daunting if you have no technical knowledge and have never done it before. However there is an excellent resource that will show you how to do all of this.
If you do want to build a website yourself but have no idea how to do it I strongly recommend that you check out Erics Tips.com. Eric has a series of lessons which shows you step by step how to set up your own website or blog. I can’t recommend this highly enough. Also I strongly recommend signing up to Daves Online Vidoes. Dave Guidon has step by step videos that show exactly how to set up websites and blogs. Dave’s videos are also packed with information on how to make money on the internet.

3. Use A Free Website/Social Media Platform.

This method is probably most effective for affiliate marketing however it is quite easy to set up your own page on a site such as squidoo or hub pages. You could set up a page, give a review of a product and then include your affiliate link in the page. For less competitive keywords it is quite easy to rank in the search engines using social media platforms. As long as the review sounds credible and you can get traffic to the page, you have the possibility of making some nice sales.

4. List Your Product On Ebay

If you are selling a physical product then you may want to set up an ebay account. Getting set up on ebay is easy and the costs are very low. Many people make a full time living selling goods on ebay and you can too.

Whatever method you decide to use, if you are going to sell your product or promote someone else’s then you are going to need some sort of a website. I am a great believer that if you don’t know how to do something you can always find someone who does! If you no technical ability but have some money then you can pay someone to do it for you. As long as you can clearly explain exactly what you want to the developer then it should be fairly straightforward. If you are on an tight budget then you can do it yourself. Be sure to check out Erics Tips and Daves Online Videos. I honestly can’t recommend them enough; you can get an excellent education on how to set up websites from these 2 resources. Eric’s Tips is a free blog but you do have to pay for Dave’s Online Videos, however the tiny price of $27 per month is worth every penny.

I hope that you have enjoyed this post. I can’t get into the specific details of exactly how to build a website as this is just mean to be an outline for online success. I will give you more tips but as mentioned there are a lot of resources on the internet that teach people how to build sites.

Now that you have chosen your product and have developed your web platform, in part 3 we’ll look at critical element of an online marketing strategy. Driving traffic.

To your massive success.

Guy.

P.S. If you enjoyed this post please link to me.